User talk:CorporateM/Advice for editing articles on organizations

Discussion

I enjoyed reading this essay. My questions would be: *Should there be a small section on COI (or a see also at the bottom wikilinking to it)? * Stock symbol/price info for companies? *MOS We don't want a directory, should the top execs generally be listed only in the infobox? Capitalismojo (talk) 20:29, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! Yah, I almost added that the infobox should only list the CEO and sometimes a President or Chairman, but felt it might be edging on instruction creep. I have an essay on COI here, but I think this is better because it focuses on the content, rather than the editor, which is the chief reason COI-related issues rarely have consensus. CorporateM (Talk) 21:20, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Pretty solid, on the whole. I think you could hammer on avoiding fancruft and product lists a little harder. --Orange Mike | Talk 02:05, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

I'd agee with OrangeMike on that. Capitalismojo (talk) 02:28, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Nice. Yes, we have a lot of product grids and sometimes I am unable to delete them because they are supported by regular editors who just don't know better. I think they are usually customers that are into the specs. I noticed user:OrangeMike added clients as one of the things that should not be added indiscriminately and I'm surprised I missed that one. I think it needs its own section like Awards. Sometimes an early adopter is notable and I usually create a Notable Works section for professional services firms, but it takes a lot of nuance and good judgement to create these sections properly. Customers cited to weak or primary sources or listed indiscriminately should be removed. Another one is industries served. Some companies get most of their revenues from a specific industry or even 2-3 clients, but some articles list a half-dozen industries they serve (read "we sell to anyone that will buy it")

I'll do a little more work on it along these lines soon if no one else gets to it. CorporateM (Talk) 03:47, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

A list of clients is often a way to tacitly imply notability, in blithe despite of WP:NOTCONTAGIOUS. I have sold books to Tony Bennett, William Rehnquist, Charlton Heston, John Prine and Scott Baio: none of their notability rubbed off on me. --Orange Mike | Talk 01:47, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

What about lists of Boards of Directors in the articles? A number of org articles list large (enormous) boards with brief descriptions of each of the members (ex-senator, sr. partner at important lawfirm, etc.) I'm not sure thats not done for the same reason as listing clients but the boards are the ultimate descision body of an org so maybe its ok. Capitalismojo (talk) 02:55, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

One difficulty of such a guideline is that everything depends. Though it is rare, some organizations are truly notable in-part because of the clients they serve, such as those that serve celebrities. In an extreme example, an organization made up of former US Presidents may have more detail than usual about each of their roles in the organization. On Playtex I dedicated an entire section to a single executive who bought and sold the company over and over and did a lot of complicated M&A type stuff during his tenure. In most cases however, what we see is a copy/paste of executive bios from the company website, typically in cases where it is not needed/appropriate at all. CorporateM (Talk) 03:32, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Ok, I'm officially burn out on this at least for now. Please feel free to edit boldly ;-) CorporateM (Talk) 05:14, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Coatracking versus coatrack

A couple editors keep changing "coatrack" to the verb "coatracking" which I thought was odd because the essay is WP:COATRACK (not a verb) and the other terms in the sentence are nouns (ie "promotion" rather than "promoting" etc.). Am I missing something? CorporateM (Talk) 00:36, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Verbing a noun is not an unusual language development - e.g. the verb 'to Google'. Trademark holders usually try to prevent it because (in some jurisdictions at least) nouns can be protected as trademarks but verbs cannot. Balaenoptera musculus (talk) 15:52, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Style

John Cline's Talk page brought me to the Badoo page, which made me think this essay needs a Style section covering the use of quotes and anecdotes. CorporateM (Talk) 19:04, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

This essay

There is consensus to include this essay as a "Wikipedia essay" including using the appropriate template. This discussion does not, however, reflect whether or not there is a consensus that supports the essay or its viewpoints itself, rather just that it should be the status of a "Wikipedia essay." Cheers, TLSuda (talk) 00:21, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Should this document be:

• A user essay that "may represent a strictly personal viewpoint" and "should not normally [be edited by someone else]"[1]
• A Wikipedia essay, which contains "advice or opinions" that may be representative of widespread norms or minority viewpoints[2]
• A Wikipedia guideline, which outlines best practices for how policies are applied in specific contexts and reflect community consensus[3]

Pinging user:OrangeMike, User:Smartse, user:Drmies and user:Capitalismojo who have provided feedback on the document previously. Also interested in general feedback on the document.

I have a COI with a large number of articles about organizations where I bring their pages up to GA status in a PR/marketing role. Like the WP:COIMICRO essay, which I also wrote, a document like this would be very useful in my work to link to as a way to explain the rationale of my edits/suggestions in both my COI and volunteer roles. I am happy with keeping it as a user essay if it makes the community uncomfortable that I wrote it. CorporateM (Talk) 21:54, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi CorportateM. In my understanding a useressay is an essay that expresses your opinion in your userspace, which you can claim "ownership" over. A Wikipedia essay is a collaborative essay you can't extend ownership over, and can be edited by anyone like any normal wikipedia content. The choice is pretty much yours. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 08:20, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

• Any way that you want it. I was called by the 'bot. As an essay, traditionally the originating editor of the page should decide how it is classified, and other editors which make suggested changes should be evaluated by every editor who cares to comment, and while (as noted by the other RFC-responding editor) there is no "ownership" of pages, there is an expectation that if there are issues of contention, the originating editor should decide the resolution of contentions for user-created essays.

Don't forget that Wikipedia guidelines are guidelines, and editors are free to color outside the lines on some pages, yet must adhear more stronly to other pages. User essays provide useful information to researchers so if there are minor style questions, the originating editor should decide, if there are factual issues that are in contention, the conflict resolution process should be performed.

For non-essay pages, things get more formal. Point being, the originating editor should in my opinion be the individual who decides this RFC. Damotclese (talk) 15:11, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

RE @Martijn Hoekstra and @Damotclese my thinking was more along the lines of the different classifications carrying different levels of consensus and authority. A user essay is a personal viewpoint, while a Wikipedia essay is a view shared by many editors and a guideline has consensus. CorporateM (Talk) 16:45, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

@CorporateM:: mind the "or minority viewpoints". A wikipedia essay is just some thing some dude wrote, and some or many people may (or may not) agree with it. It has no consensus annotation. If the templates don't make that sufficiently clear, we should probably change the templates: anyone can write an essay on their opinion. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 16:55, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Cool, I will move it to a Wikipedia essay if the RFC does not attract any drastically different viewpoints for a guideline or user essay. CorporateM (Talk) 21:37, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

• OK to be a Wikipedia essay - I see no problem with making this a Wikipedia essay. However the content seems to meander a bit and I'm unsure of the type of discussion where you would want to cite it. You would be almost as well off citing other existing policies and guidelines. If you have in mind some past discussions where it could have been helpful, maybe you could link to some of those discussions here on the talk page. EdJohnston (talk) 19:15, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

@EdJohnston Here is an example of how I would like to see it used. Currently there are no policies, guidelines or essays that explicitly support that edit. Each editor has to interpret the policies and guidelines individually, which leads to a lot of inconsistency. Hopefully this document does not introduce any new rules, but merely explains how they are commonly interpreted in a lot of common circumstances that arise in this set of articles. Many of the topics covered here are frequently topics of RfCs or content disputes. CorporateM (Talk) 16:13, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

WP essay I agree that the originator must make the final decision. I think it will be most useful if it is a Wikipedia essay. Jojalozzo 16:25, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

WP essay So others can edit it as well - Essays can be very helpful in making those tricky little determinations during article creation - but are often less used than WP:MOS for information. I notice there isn't an article for Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Organization, maybe this shows we could use one and or this should be expanded into one?

We have these;

• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Contents#Topic- and culture-specific guidelines
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages#Organization
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Cue sports#Organizations, titles and competition
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Disambiguation pages/Register#Organization

Tinkermen ^Talk 18:56, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

WP essay although Tinkermen almost has it right - shouldn't it be part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Organizations which is pretty dormant, maybe revise Wikipedia:WikiProject Organizations/Guidelines to include it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dougweller (talk • contribs) 05:49, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

WP essay. It's not a user essay since it's in Wikispace. It's not a guideline until it's proposed and adopted, I think the usual way is to mark it with a proposed-rule template and have a lengthy and large discussion. I'd be surprised if it could be adopted as a guideline, although it's a decent page and there's not really much to object to.

FWIW, not to make a mountain out of a molehill, but: @Damotclese re "if there are minor style questions, the originating editor should decide" isn't true, at least not formally and not practically in all instances. And not sure what you mean by "there is an expectation that if there are issues of contention, the originating editor should decide the resolution of contentions for user-created essays" depending on what you mean by "user-created". None of our essays are created by bots (yet) I don't think. If you mean userspace essays, I think the user pretty much doesn't just decide the resolution but simply makes any changes he likes and deletes any he doesn't, period. If you mean Wikispace essays that were first created by a user (which I guess is pretty much all essays, since the initial edit creating a page can't be made by a group), nuh-uh. A Wikispace page is editable by all; the page creator has no special standing whatsoever except to the extent that he's able to convince other editors that he does, which is essentially of a political question hinging on how persuasive he is and so forth. Herostratus (talk) 19:54, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

re lawsuits

Of which the essay says either "Articles about organizations should not include an indiscriminate list of... lawsuits, even when reliably sourced" (if you wanted to elide differently, you could quote it as, or at least argue it as an authority for, "Articles about organizations should not include... lawsuits, even when reliably sourced" which is not the spirit of the essay but people do do stuff like that).

The lawsuit question is a vexing one. All sufficiently large organizations get sued, and even some fairly low-merit ones get settled, which doesn't necessarily prove anything. You do hear about people grousing about editors putting in cruft about low-merit or run-of-the-mill lawsuits (although I've never seen this personally, which doesn't prove anything). At the same time, we don't want to create a chilling effect on reporting lawsuits. There're an important line of sight into an organization. What an organization tends to be sued for, how often, and what the outcomes are can be quite important in answering the question "What is this entity?".

Here's a good quote from Kevin Drum, just today: "All large organizations have large numbers of problems. That's inevitable. The only way to judge them properly is to compare them to other large organizations doing the same thing."[4]

Sounds spot-on to me. I don't really have a suggestion for an actual edit. There's nothing wrong with the actual text; it does proscribe only the "indiscriminate list" which nobody could object to... but sometimes those details get lost in the rush of things. Quotes spice up a page, and Drum's quote might be a good one to include, though. Herostratus (talk) 20:46, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

Balance

One of the pieces of feedback I got when I wrote this essay is that it focuses almost exclusively on avoiding promotion, and not on avoiding coatrack. The BLP policy has a section called "Balance" that I think could be adapted here with some tweaks, shown below. CorporateM (Talk) 22:38, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Balance

Further information: Wikipedia:COATRACK

Criticism and praise should be included if they can be sourced to reliable secondary sources, so long as the material is presented responsibly, conservatively, in a disinterested tone and in a matter that is representative of the total body of literature. Do not give disproportionate space to particular viewpoints; the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all. Care must be taken with article structure to ensure the overall presentation and section headings are broadly neutral. Beware of claims that rely on guilt by association, and biased, malicious or overly promotional content. The idea expressed in WP:Eventualism – that every Wikipedia article is a work in progress, and that it is therefore okay for an article to be temporarily unbalanced because it will eventually be brought into shape – does not apply to biographies should be balanced with the need to represent the article-subject fairly. Given their potential impact on biography subjects' lives, biographies must be fair to their subjects at all times.

Name of this essay

This is an essay, but its' title sounds like "What Wikipedia is Not" which is policy. I suggest that it be changed so as to not confuse editors. Coretheapple (talk) 20:38, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 18 February 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. The dispute over whether the essay should be in RM or MfD is recognized, but a fairly minor note. (non-admin closure) Vaticidalprophet (talk) 02:35, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

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Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not (organizations) → User:CorporateM/Advice for editing articles on organizations – Per this discussion at COIN, this article has been mostly written by CorporateM, an editor with multiple conflicts of interest. The current title suggests this is endorsed or supported by the Wikipedia community, even with the banner at the top saying it is an opinion piece. Moving it to CorporateM's userpage makes it clearer that this essay is an editor's advise and has not been assessed by the wider community. Z1720 (talk) 02:10, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

• Comment. As a procedural matter, this really belongs at WP:AFD because the proposal is essentially to delete the essay, not to simply change its title within mainspace. As to the merits, if anyone disagrees with the contents of the essay, the best thing might be to simply edit it and see if there's consensus for the changes. There are hundreds of obscure essays on WP and none are owned by any one editor. If the problem is that the title suggests endorsement by the WP community (I assume because Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not is in fact a policy, not an essay), then a change to a title like Wikipedia:Advice for editing articles on organizations would be in order, without moving to userspace. Station1 (talk) 08:11, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

• Rename and move I agree with the reasons seet forth by Z1720, I disagree that we need an AFD (actually an MFD), as this is not a deletion, simply moving out of mainspace. In fact, I don't believe this discussion is even necessary. It should simply be moved, as the essay creator has washed his hands of the matter. I do believe that the title is misleading, that it incorrectly implies endorsement by the community, and that as a preliminary matter, the name should be changed forthwith. Wikipedia:Advice for editing articles on organizations is one possibility though it may suggest more community assent than warranted. perhaps Wikipedia:Thoughts on editing articles on organizations. Coretheapple (talk) 14:29, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

• I am not attached to the title name. I am concerned that if the article remains on the mainspace readers will think the advice is coming from the community, and not from a specific user. Moving it to CorporateM's userspace makes it clearer that this is CM's advice, imo. If it remains in the mainspace I think we should overhaul the essay and include more wikilinks to policy and guidelines. Z1720 (talk) 14:57, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Yes I agree with you on all points above. Moving this is imperative. Coretheapple (talk) 15:07, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

In the interim, it can of course be edited to bring into line with community norms and policy. The section on "speculation" reads as if it was written by a corporate public relations department. I changed it to bring into line with policy. Coretheapple (talk) 15:27, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

• Comment. I agree with Station1 that this shouldn't be handled as a move request, though it should be done at WP:MFD. I have no opinion on the underlying request itself at this time. -- Calidum 15:09, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

What difference does it make? The requested outcome is the same. Coretheapple (talk) 15:15, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

• Rename and move to user space. Item is 92.6% by CorporateM. ☆ Bri (talk) 18:54, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
• Keep, rewrite, and rename. The general topic - the content and sourcing of articles on organization would be useful. Some of the worst content and sourcing on Wikipedia is in these articles. Medical articles have a similar guideline WP:MEDMOS, the difference is only that MEDMOS is clear and useful. This essay makes everything unclear and opens up every point to endless arguments which almost inevitably will be won by paid editors who can drive away volunteer editor by arguing a point to death. In no case should this be written by a paid editor, especially one who has made such gross errors as his editing of Banc de Binary, Mylan and Heather Bresch, and Reynolds and Reynolds. Rewrite it, get rid of all the mealy mouth nonsense, or just delete it. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 01:21, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

@Smallbones: I agree that the current version needs to be scrapped and a renamed version started over from scratch. Since we're currently weighing a move request to the user space, I think that's the first step. Coretheapple (talk) 13:43, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

• Rename and move. It currently looks like a community essay, and the official-sounding title is a problem. SarahSV ^(talk) 05:45, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.